I wrote a post about web design flaws including a crappy website checklist. But why limit an individual’s focus to a passive one? There’s already plenty of all this going around these days. Let’s speak about something more constructive: how to create an excellent website.
It is not up to you whether or not your company’s website is excellent. You cannot make your website’s visitors have a good time. Websites, like art, are very subjective. What makes a great website will be different for each individual.
The good news is that there are many absolutely amazing website capabilities for any audience, branding, or style. Everything basically comes down to the user experience.
To begin, you should understand what ‘user experience’ means in relation to your company website and why it is more important this year than ever before. Then we’ll go into the fundamental UX design elements that will help you in creating a great website.
101 in UX design
To have a great website, you don’t need to learn how to be a user experience (UX) designer. However, if you don’t grasp the fundamentals of UX, you won’t be able to make the best judgments regarding your site’s design and content.
- UX design, in fact, pushes individuals through the sales funnel.
- Fact: UX design has a direct influence on your bottom line.
- The design of your user interface has an impact on your search ranking.
This section will provide you with a high-level overview of UX design from a marketing perspective.
What exactly is UX Design?
User experience design, often known as ‘interaction design,’ is the process of creating a website that is user-friendly.
UX design is similar to a home plan. A blueprint specifies everything from the number of rooms, window positioning, and the way doors open to the location of appliances. It ensures that the home is comfortable and has enough space for all of your things.
The same thing happens with UX design, except for your website!
A typical UX design process requires research on the intended audience for a website:
- Annoyances
- Inspirations
- Objectives
What they need to accomplish on the site, as well as what they’ll most likely be doing and in what psychological response when they come across certain pages.
Oh, certainly, UX design is big.
It also needs to take into account your content – what content you have, if any should be plucked, and whether any important content is missing from the ideal user experience for your organization.
Then it sets out to create a logical structure for all of that material. It stores everything in the area where the target individual would expect to find it, much like a librarian, while also establishing lateral channels for different trips toward the same end objective. A good user experience design takes into account the routes of main, intermediate, and even secondary audiences.
This is performed by deliberately organizing and structuring the menu, callouts, call-to-action (CTA) buttons, highlighted or relevant content suggestions, and the sequence of information on a page. The delivery is an active wireframe model of your website, which allows you to evaluate its usability before adding color and content.
A good UX design’s ultimate purpose is to give the correct information at the right time, to keep a visitor moving through the website to attain their intended goal.
Why Does Ui / Ux Matter?
It’s one thing for me to claim that UX design is vital — but WHY? Where is the actual evidence that UX design should be a business consideration?
Let’s go through the information I presented at the beginning of this chapter again.
People are moved through the marketing funnel via UX design.
There are several methods for someone to end up on your website.
- by discovering one of your pages in the search results
- Result of a search ad
- Obtained from social media
- through email via a link provided in a message from a friend or family member
- By inputting your URL after viewing it in a newspaper advertisement.
How someone discovers you tells a lot about where they are in the buyer’s journey (and I strongly advise knowing about search intent!).
UX design takes into account all of these possibilities and more, ensuring that wherever a person visits, there is a clear message, navigation, and information to help them in taking another step.
This might be from the top of the curve into the centre, such as reading a blog article and being directed to your case studies. It might also be from the centre to the bottom, such as what message and functionality aid a customer in entering and completing the checkout process. You should also gently promote lateral moves across the top and middle to create trust among people who aren’t ready to convert.
UX design has a direct impact on your bottom line.
Every company website has a profitable end goal, whether it’s completing a sale or generating a lead. It’s natural for a great website to provide a straightforward and satisfying experience.
The following are some UX factors that have a direct influence on leads and sales:
- Size, position, choices, and copy of menus
- Context, location, and wording for CTA buttons
- Cart – the number of steps required to purchase, copy, and display error messages
- Forms — positioning, field count, copy in and around fields
- Credibility and trust placement and prominence of material
- Considerations for gated content in terms of location and form
- Reliability – observable indicators of data security, communications, etc.
- Mobile-friendliness — chores may be completed on any device.
Any flaw in any of these UX factors might cost you sales. Period.
Your Search Ranking Is Influenced by UX Design
Google is concerned with developing its own positive user experiences. That is how they have a monopoly on the search engine business. Google and other search engines try to provide effective search results that are ranked using machine learning, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing.
UX in Action: How to Create an Amazing Website Design
You’re now convince that UX design benefits businesses. Let’s go right to the most important UX factors your website requires to be genuinely outstanding.
- Concentrate on a single primary audience.
- Make plans for numerous pathways across the site and add menus in reasonable locations.
- Make wise menu selections.
- Use caution before deciding on a course of action!
- Make sure menus and CTA buttons have clear phrasing.
- Make the most of your footer menu.
- Allow intricate details to be buried behind clicks by knowing when to click and when to scroll.
- Allow your website to initiate a conversation.
- Place social evidence alongside call-to-action buttons on conversion pages.
- Be smart with relevant material and callouts. Be more strategic with foot CTAs.
- The flow of your page should tell a tale.
- Give your hidden pages some attention.